Year of the gun

By now, you’ve probably read or heard
stories about all of the gun-related bills pending in the Illinois
General Assembly.

A large number of gun-control bills is not
particularly surprising. Most that end up on the legislative
calendar are introduced year after year by allies of Chicago Mayor
Richard M. Daley.

What’s striking this year is how many pro-gun rights bills
are moving through the system.

So far, most media attention has been focused
on high-profile gun bills such as legislation giving people the
right to carry concealed firearms.

But something else is going on here.

Emboldened by a major victory last year on a
very narrow bill that expanded gun owners’ rights, the NRA
has introduced a ton of little bills that nibble away at the edges
of current gun-control laws rather than make sweeping changes.

All told, the NRA has almost 40 bills in the
hopper right now, about twice as many as the anti-gun groups have.

Last year, the NRA was successful in
steamrolling a bill through the House and Senate to exempt gun
owners from municipal gun ordinances if they use the banned weapons
to defend their homes. The bill surfaced after a Wilmette man shot
an intruder with a gun that was prohibited by Wilmette’s
strict anti-gun ordinances.

The Wilmette incident quickly became a cause
célèbre, and the bill sailed through both chambers.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed the bill, but the House and Senate
overrode him in November with huge majorities.

Some of the NRA’s bills this year are
logical extensions of the Wilmette bill. If it’s OK to shoot
an intruder with an illegal weapon, the logic goes, then why allow
the local ordinances in the first place? Bills in both the House
and the Senate would preempt local control on this subject,
although one preemption bill failed in the Senate Judiciary
Committee this month.

Other NRA bills also seem reasonable at first
glance, and even on closer examination. More than 20 years ago, the
NRA signed on to an historic legislative compromise that outlined
how gun owners could transport their weapons. But some
municipalities, including Chicago, have severely narrowed those
restrictions. So the NRA has introduced bills that would reimpose
the statewide standard on the entire state.

Both of these concepts have been dealt with
before by the General Assembly. What’s different this year is
that the NRA has introduced different versions of each idea and done so
simultaneously in the two legislative chambers, overwhelming the other
side. The anti-gunners, who are accustomed to opposing a handful of
highly visible bills every year, are now being forced to lobby against
a ton of bills, not knowing which will be called for a vote or when.

The NRA has about a half-dozen bills mandating
the destruction of Firearm Owners Identification card applications.
The NRA believes that police can use the applications to track
law-abiding gun owners. The police hotly deny this, but they and
their allies are forced to expend enormous amounts of nervous
energy keeping track of just this one issue.

In the Democrat-controlled House, the
NRA’s bills are being allowed to reach the floor to bolster
the reelection chances of downstate Democrats. If House Republicans
have any hope of picking up seats, it will be largely in southern
Illinois, where gun control isn’t exactly a popular subject.
The NRA-backed bills will allow targeted House Democrats to greatly
bolster their credibility with their single-issue voters.

But because Mayor Daley thinks so highly of
his own anti-gun bills, the House Democratic leadership has steered
most of his legislation to sympathetic committees.

The Wilmette bill and the presidential race
last year, which saw Democratic nominee John Kerry waving a shotgun
in the air at every opportunity, appeared to shift the momentum in
Springfield toward the pro-gun side. So the anti-gun forces are
running themselves ragged this spring, hoping to avoid another
debacle like the November veto session.

The NRA doesn’t have the sort of
national media attention behind its efforts this spring that it did
with the Wilmette bill last year, but the group seems more
optimistic about its chances than it has in ages.